On Nov 8, 3:00*pm, Jim Beckman wrote:
At 15:40 08 November 2010, sisu1a wrote:



And what of it if today's youth want 'instant gratification'? Should
that not then be the goal for soaring operations to provide? If that
is our reality, than we either need to adapt to it or fade into
irrelevance.

Isn't that a fair working definition of a dilettante? * Are those really
the people that we want to attract into our sport? *On the other hand, it
is most certainly the folks that the commercial ride operations want to
attract.

I notice that when a 2-32 is available as a ride ship, it gets a lot of
use. *And it's always sort of entertaining to see how they can pack two
folks into the back seat.

Jim Beckman


As a former ride pilot, I can assure you "Those People" aren't
"dilettantes", they're just people - mostly very nice people, who
decided to give gliding a try. Judging them to be dilettantes is just
one of many examples of how we chase people away. Treating them
warmly is how we convert them - and we DO want to convert them.

A percentage of ride passengers do come back to learn to fly gliders -
a significantly larger percentage come back if their first ride was in
a decent glider and they were offered training in something better
than a 2-33. Many more say they would love to learn to fly gliders if
their personal and financial situation permitted and I believe them.